James Roguski
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The WHO Director-General has pushed delegations to conclude negotiations on a pandemic instrument by the beginning of the 77th session of the World Health Assembly (27 May to 1 June 2024).
Instead of postponing the negotiations beyond WHA77, which would give time to build a better pandemic instrument, DG Tedros said the INB has two more weeks before the WHA77 to arrive at a compromise deal.
Sources from the Secretariat confirmed with Third World Network (TWN) that DG Tedros has made the need for a pandemic treaty entrenching One Health obligations as a matter of his legacy. He is constantly pushing the INB Bureau to present a clean text to the WHA.
A developing country delegate privy to a private conversation by the WHO DG and his staff, told TWN that the DG’s plan is to get this draft adopted at WHA. He apparently instructed his staff to make delegates negotiate as much as possible prior to the WHA, remove all colour coding from the negotiating text that indicate lack of consensus, and present a clean text to the ministers at the WHA. He would then ask health ministers of the various Member States “whether they can live with the text” amounting to forcing a political compromise.
According to negotiators who spent a whole day on PABS, last week, DG Tedros sat through the negotiations and intervened, attempting to make compromises primarily on proposals from developing countries.
Sources have also confirmed that earlier in the week the DG had reached out to certain country capitals, whose delegations were actively seeking meaningful deliverables on equity in the pandemic instrument that were resisted by developed countries. He requested the ministries to discourage their delegations from making demands that would really address inequities in the draft giving priority to reaching a deal.
So while international treaty making typically takes years, “time” is being wielded into beating this process into shape to deliver a Pandemic Agreement.
“There is perception that this is a take-it-or-leave-it-moment. The Africa Group is being led to believe by developed countries, particularly by the EU, that the text on the table is the best bet developing countries can hope for,” an activist observing these dynamics told us last evening.
A developed country negotiator told us, “If logic prevails, the IHR should be pushed through because we are close to finalising it. But it seems there is no common sense here.”
https://genevahealthfiles.substack.com/p/pandemic-agreement-borrowed-time-fate-ihr-stake
https://twitter.com/ThiruGeneva/status/1790091073391329530
A revised version of the proposed amendments was supposed to be circulated on May 10, and the 8th session of the Working Group for amendments to the International Health Regulations was scheduled to be held on May 16-17, 2024.
The eighth meeting of the WGHIR will resume in a two-day final session 16-17 May to continue and conclude the work of the Working Group according to its mandate from the Health Assembly.
However, a new version of the amendments has NOT been made publicly available.
The resumed session of the WGIHR scheduled for May 16-17, 2024 (which was added to the WHO website) has been removed.
The status of the next meeting of the WGIHR is currently unclear.
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Originally Published: 2024-05-13 19:40:27
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